Emergency worker Alice Bowen pauses for a moment in the golden autumnal sunshine warming the bustling centre of Taunton. She should be exactly the kind of voter receptive to the prime minister’s efforts to help struggling families by junking what he claims are costly net zero pledges.
“We are a family of four. We cannot afford to get an electric car,” she says, as shoppers and office staff queue for sandwiches and bags of chips in Somerset’s county town. “It is not feasible for us. We both work full-time. He is a civil servant and I’m in emergency services. It’s not like we have bad jobs – it’s just that the cost is very prohibitive.”
